0919_Timor: Several thousand Salesian youth gather round RM for Mission Sunday

 

 

DILI: 24th October '04 -- The celebration of Mission Sunday in the universal  Church found particular and noisy resonance in the multipurpose hall at Don Bosco, Comoro, Dili on this day as Fr. Pascual Chávez celebrated the 9.30 am Mass.  Many of his congregation had been travelling for hours to arrive - seven truckloads from the eastern region around Fuiloro, each laden with 50 or so members of the Timorese version of SYM, the Movimento Juvenil Salesiano, plus many more from each Salesian SDB and FMA work around the nation.  The estimated total of young people present at the Mass was 2,500.  SDB and FMA participated as did past pupils, amongst them four Cabinet Ministers, and members of the Association of Clients of Mary Help of Christians (ADMA). 

    After some fast tutoring by the Director of Novices, Fr Ramoncito Padilla, and possibly because he is also a fast learner (!) the Rector Major celebrated the Mass in Tetum, the liturgical language for this nation.  His homily was in Spanish, peppered with a little Tetum as he used the features of the altar decoration to set his theme: Servisu-Pao-Lalehan (bread, work, heaven); Imi ba...Haklaken Liafuan Diak (Go, preach the Good News); Dom Bosco esta vivo entres nos (Don Bosco is alive amongst us).  But given the presence of thousands of young people, the inevitable substance of the homily was to do with youth holiness, with an appeal to Timorese youth to be apostles and missionaries.

    The gathering in Comoro, including the celebrations that followed the Mass, was characterised by the presence of the Salesian Family.  The Salesian work in East Timor is similarly characterised - SDB and FMA working closely together, and encouraging other branches of the Family as well.  In fact the Rector Major in his parting words before leaving for Fatumaca (some 3 hours drive to the East) was to ask the Salesian Family to 'grow in communion, grow in  numbers, grow in spirituality and to establish the missing branch, the Salesian Cooperators'.